Blinding Light (BLS Book 1)

Nolan

I’m standing there in absolute shock.

This is for sure a damn big turn of events.

A million questions stir in my mind. This answers my question that there was a telepathic breach—the tape already proves that it would and can happen, whether I saw it or not. However, something’s missing. Either I find out what was in that letter or what the heck happened after she read it. And if it had ever gotten to Mila, or how.

I return to the Project room, “Hey, dad.”

“Hey yourself Nolan, where have you been?”

“I was trying to find out what security records they had of the room of captivity.”

“Oh? And did you find anything?”

“Yes, actually,” I reply, and all eyes were on me in milliseconds.

“What did you find?” Indra asks, voicing her impatience.

“Not an exact solution, but there was a secret file in the access folder that showed somehow Raven has gotten out of the secret room and has been communicating with Evren for longer than we think.”

“That little—” Indra begins and cuts herself off when Father puts a hand on her shoulder.

“Come now, Indra, hear what the boy has to say. Punishment for anyone can be reserved for later.”

“You’re right. Nolan, please continue.”

“Of course. I have reason to believe that they had gotten a letter to the host. That’s why the host is unresponsive to any of the tactics. The letter must’ve triggered something new. Something different from our data.”

“I see…”

Indra paces for exactly sixty seconds before she looks at Sira. “Bring up the files of the host for the previous day.”

“Of course, ma’am.”

She types into the computer and Projects the files onto the big screen where we were minutes ago looking at Mila and her sister, which I’m still confused about why they let her out.

They show the events of that memory the day before. It’s all running smoothly—Raven’s in Mila’s room. They’re chatting like teenage girls—giggling like school girls. I glance at Asher; he’s gawking at Mila like a fool.

Wait a minute. Is this idiot…

“I hope you still know how to throw that knife of yours,” she says, and Raven visibly grimaced.

“Well…that’s what I came here to ask you about. Want to practice with me?”

Mila looks out the window.

“Right now? I’m so stuffed,” she groans.

Raven pleads with her puppy eyes, “S’il vous plait? I really want to practice with you. Just like old times?”

But suddenly, the screen blacks out.

“What happened?” Indra asks, eyeing Sira at the same time.

“I don’t know.”

“Well, figure it out!” She spat, losing her nerve.

She’s not the only one these days.

“Indra. Calm down. We are not going to lose hope. We are not going to lose patience. Not yet, not when we’re this close,” my father reassures her. She takes a deep breath in and exhales roughly.

“I apologize, Sira.”

“No worries, ma’am.”

Sira types into the computer. In just a few seconds, she smiles, “I believe there is a bug in the system.”

“Then why are you smiling?” I ask, frowning. “Isn’t that a bad thing?”

“Yes, only when you don’t know how to fix it,” she rolls her eyes. “Lucky for you,” she jabs a finger in my direction, “I know just how to get rid of it.”

She types into the computer and not a second later, the tape resumes. Time froze, and Mila is the only one that’s moving.

“What’s happening?”

“I believe we have found our telepathic breach,” Sira says. “See here, there’s a fog right outside. The fog of the system, even in memory, can block out the mental cameras, which record the files.”

As Sira explains, I can see the fog starting to form outside the cabin Mila’s in.

Then, as if we’re tucked away from reality, the screens show a recording of me, backtrack twelve years.

“The actual mother agreed to our deal. Kill the other,” Father’s voice rings out over the comms. I look at him, and he also seems confused.

“How did she…?” He begins but cuts himself off. The scene before me is mesmerizing. So vivid as if I’m reliving the nightmare of my first kill—my first murder.

I watch myself type into the computer, hardwiring her memories to seem like her mother died of natural causes ten years later.

When in reality, Silas shifted into a bug and dropped the ricin poison in her mother’s morning tea. Mila is standing there, confused and horrified, just like we are. It warps and circles like a spinning illusion; then her old house takes place—the place where it all began, at a small house in Calanques.

The memory is taking a hold of me as well as everyone else in the room. The memory where we thought we had saved the world. I watch as we land our ugly time travel machine—we never bothered to clean it because ironically, we never had the time. I watch myself clasp the power dampener gun into my belt—watching my emotionless face as I followed closely behind Father.

“Are you sure this is the right place?”

“Yes,” Sira answered.

“Alright, move out!” My father orders.

The soldiers surround the house. Where moments earlier, I was asked to kill the other. Silas has successfully delivered the poison. I kick down the door effortlessly, and I see the girl. The girl we’ve been searching for—for forty years. She is so young, which makes it better for the Project.

“Get her,” I say to the guard behind me. She nods back and grabs her skinny, fragile, pale arm.

“No! Let me go!” She shrieks, almost inhuman. A loud crack sounds as I watch her break the guard’s hand. I watch in surprise, but of pure terror.

The woman screams, dropping her arm. She runs to the boy’s side, whose eyes are starting to glow. I see myself pointing the ability dampener gun at the boy.

“Evren…Evren…” I hear the girl whisper.

“Shh, Mila.”

“Give us the girl, and you don’t have to witness this fight.”

I could barely recognize my own voice—dark and cold, desperate to do anything for survival.

“Never. Go to hell,” he snarls before his eyes glow brighter.

I remembered how terrified I was, it was so hard not to snap my tail between my legs and run for my life.

Everyone suddenly starts screaming and scratching at themselves in the room. I still remember the feeling. The feeling of my fingers tearing itself away from the bone, the skin peeling itself off, ripping the flesh. The feeling that someone is ripping out my ribs one by one, choking me as they ripped out my intestines. I still remember how both my shoulders pop out of their sockets as the pain doubles, triples. I watch myself fire the gun as I fall onto my knees before I can lose consciousness. Then there was no more pain, I see myself checking if anything was broken.

“Surrender now,” I said calmly in the video.

“Never,” Evren replies, eyes still glowing.

I remember how I didn’t know that he have an ability, which scared me more. Even though they’re all illusions, but he makes it so real and I don’t want to test his abilities to kill—he is still a boy after all. But then I remembered that I had an ability too—stolen from others and DNA modification from the scrapes of the DNA left from the Father, so it wasn’t perfect since her ability was hard to discover and find. We have proof to believe that all three children have gotten their gifts from their father. But we did not know who that was as the mother refused to tell.

I activate my ability—my eyes glowing amber. I remember seeing orange, yellow, and red licking the sides of my vision, threatening to take over. But I force control and make a ring of fire around Evren, then engulf him in flames. With his abilities dampened, my flames easily reach him, licking his clothes, burning his skin.

“Evren! No!” The girl screams. Her piercing scream brings me back to reality. The boy is slumped on the ground, covered in third-degree burns—his skin is smoking and blackened. And he doesn’t move.

Wait. I didn’t mean to burn him… I remember thinking. I didn’t want to hurt anyone.

But I can’t change the past.

IT’S ALREADY HAPPENED

Our time travel relies on energy sources. And we’re running out of those. At best, a two-year span is what we have left. After the long forty years of searching for her, we wasted many resources—and the energy sources are not something to use unless necessary.

“Evren!” I watch as little Mila reaches out to him, her eyes glowing an impossibly warm but pale forest green. Her hands touch him, and his skin knits itself back together—it heals.

“Nnnghh…Mila…Run…” Evren moans and tries to get up.

“Get her,” I hear my father say.

“No…NO!”

She screams as I watch myself grab her arm. I yank her up and jerk her away from her brother. The woman takes over and half-drags her outside. I watch Asher put the fire out, his eyes glowing a faint blue in the darkness.

“Why don’t we burn this?” I motion to the house.

“No,” my father answers. “We got what we came for, and maybe more. Take her brother too. He has an ability—a powerful one. Without the ability dampener we learned from the sister, we would’ve never gotten this far.”

“Yes sir,” the guards salute. I see the team about to leave for the time travel machine when I hear the brother’s voice.

“Let go! Where did you take her?”

A woman part of our medical team drags him out when he refuses to be on a bed. A trail of blood follows how she drags him out. His eyes still glow a faint gold.

“I swear, I will find her, and when I—” I point the ability dampener gun at him and activate it. Firing it, it cuts him off mid-sentence.

Without his ability activated as a shield from the pain, he faints, and the woman drags him out into the time travel machine, shaped like those alien spaceships that you see in movies. I guess the weirdest things you find on Earth are not as bad as you might think.

“Good job, son,” My father pats me on my shoulder, I could almost feel the hand there right now. “You have saved the human race.”

“But at what cost, father?” I hear myself ask. I still remember feeling how it was at a considerable cost—of our humanity.

“At the cost of nothing,” he replies. “None dead. That’s an accomplishment. Come on, let’s go.”

He walks toward the machine. I stay behind and narrow my eyes at the joyful, little house that we had destroyed. The house could’ve expanded into so many possibilities if humanity wasn’t on the cliff of going extinct.

While watching the tape, I see the older Mila follow me out the door, a horrified expression on her face while looking at me.

Now, I see how Raven and Evren’s plan has taken into shape. She’s a smart girl, and now she figured it out. And now, I know exactly how to activate her abilities.

It may not be what the data concluded. But this is the solution to our current problem. I wasn’t about to use the extra time that we do not have. I had to use what I had. That may be no excuse, but I did what I had to do to survive.

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Thanks, with lots of smiles

☆•Yiona•☆